Finally, the D word has entered England’s vocabulary. While Marcus Trescothick, the assistant coach, said the team “are always trying to be as positive as we can”, in the face of needing 536 runs with seven wickets standing to beat India on the final day, he acknowledged: “You don’t have to just win or lose.” A dressing room that is normally fixated on winning is finally coming to terms with a different result – not defeat, but a draw.
As the final day at Edgbaston dawns on Sunday, the prospect of victory will be laughably remote, with India’s seamers in form and still fresh and England pursuing a target fully 190 higher than anything that has been successfully chased in the entire history of Test cricket.
The Old Trafford washout during the 2023 Ashes remains the only stalemate in 35 matches played under Ben Stokes’s captaincy. “I have got no interest in playing for draws, the dressing room’s got no interest in playing for draws and we always try and look at the positive option,” Stokes famously said in 2022. But after India completely dominated the fourth day, Trescothick admitted that the time might have come to become interested.
“That has been built up away from what the changing-room messages are,” Trescothick said. “We obviously understand a bit better what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to give the players the best opportunity to win games every time we go out to play. And if we can’t do that, then we try and adapt accordingly.
“We’re always trying to be as positive as we can. I think we all appreciate it’s a hell of a lot of runs to try to score. It’s nearly 550 tomorrow, and I don’t think we’ve seen scoring rates quite that quick in a day. We’re not stupid enough [not] to understand that you don’t have to just win or lose. There are three results possible in every game that you play.”
There was a point as England started their long-distance chase on Saturday evening when the residents of the Hollies Stand struck up a chant of “stand up if you still believe”. “We were all stood up in the changing room,” Trescothick said. “It’ll be a challenging day, no doubt, but we’ve had various Test matches over the period of time that Brendon [McCulllum] and Ben have been in charge and [changed] the way we’ve gone about things. We’ve done some things in our time that are different to what has been done before.”
During England’s first innings all 10 wickets fell when the ball in play was less than 22 overs old, and if there is a straw for them to clutch it is that they are only six away from reaching that point. “In our first innings we were three down overnight,” Trescothick said. “We came out the next day, obviously we lost a couple of early wickets, but then we had a monster partnership that really got us back into the game. So it’s definitely possible. Once the ball goes softer it definitely gets a little bit easier, and it hasn’t seamed as much as when it’s new. So if we can potentially bat a bit better, and maybe not lose two wickets like we did on the morning of day three, then who knows?”
Morne Morkel, India’s bowling coach, certainly did not think the result was a foregone conclusion: “Tomorrow morning that first hour is going to be crucial,” he said. India’s decision to delay their declaration until deep into the final session, by which time their lead had been stretched to a massive 607, suggested that even after extending their opponent’s task to historic proportions – and with memories fresh of them easily chasing 371 at Headingley a fortnight ago – they feared England might actually make it.
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“England have been successful playing this way, chasing totals,” Morkel said. “I know a lot of teams would prefer to bat out three or four sessions and shake hands and take the draw, but that’s their thing. If teams set them a total of 400 they’re happy to take it on. That’s great for the game, but I think teams will start to be slightly more street smart, learn from their mistakes and plan a little bit better.”
